Good intentions never ended injustice

your say May 26, 2018 01:00

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Re: “An ode to the sacrificial spud”, Have Your Say, yesterday.

It is a real cheap shot for Michael Setter to say I make “spurious arguments” without giving a single example of anything that I’ve ever written about vegetarianism that wasn’t 100-per-cent accurate. He seems to think that if we do nothing people will find their conscience and do the right thing. That assumption defies everything we know about history!

All major social changes in history – the ending of slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights and, yes, animal rights – were a result of the efforts of “contentious” people such as myself who cared more about fighting injustice than we did about whether or not we upset the people who were causing it.

Actually, Abraham Lincoln once believed that slave owners would eventually find their humanity and voluntarily end slavery. After he became president he realised he had been gravely mistaken and then became extremely “contentious” in his successful effort to save the nation and end slavery. Thank God Lincoln’s adviser wasn’t a person like Michael Setter, who no doubt would have told Abe to be patient and just wait for the slave owners to become nice people!